BMPreVIEW

BMPreVIEW is an approachable utility that enables you to open and view the thumbnails of very large images with the BMP file extension. It comes packed with a couple of advanced options, such as histogram equalization, automatic and manual contrast adjustment, anti-aliasing mode, and RAM optimization.

The installation procedure is a fast and uneventful. The tool adopts a classical-looking interface with a minimalistic structure, where options become available by opening the right-click menu.

After loading a BMP image using the file browser or drag-and-drop support, you can copy it to the Clipboard (the preview, not the full picture) and examine file properties when it comes to the file name and size, resolution, color mode, bit depth, load time, memory usage for the image, and total RAM usage.

It's possible to browse for a folder instead of an image, in order to easily navigate all containing BMP pictures. BMPreVIEW is capable of equalizing the histogram using its own predefined parameters, and of automatically normalizing the contrast levels.

It also lets you increase or decrease the contrast manually, make the frame stay on top of other windows, enable or disable anti-aliasing mode, and optimize RAM usage automatically. Modifications can be overwritten to the original file or saved to a new one.

Since it acts like a previewer for BMP pictures, BMPreVIEW is not built to show images with their full size. However, you can make custom-sized selections to view image sections in their actual dimension, as well as maximize the main app window and reload the photo to fit it to the window.

Keyboard shortcuts are supported. It didn't hog system resources, hang, crash or prompt error messages in our tests. Unfortunately, it doesn't support 64-bit Windows but we must also keep in mind that it hasn't been updated for a long time.

To wrap it up, BMPreVIEW offers a simple solution to previewing large BMP files and finding out valuable information, backed by a handy configuration set.